Dumping Representative Democracy

The cascading failure of representative democracy in the US has a lot of causes. Those involve all manner of shell games played by professional politicians, political parties, incumbents, payoffs, power blocks, extortions, bribes, and bird-nests on the ground. Doesn’t matter whether it’s local, state government, national government or some district or other. It’s always the same names, the same non-working solutions, the same broken promises, the same background names everyone recognizes buying them off.

So how’s a country going to break itself free of all the ne’er-do-wells hanging around over Power Lunches, back rooms, limousines, and board rooms thinking up new ways to get rich?

The answer is actually fairly obvious and simple. Opening the system up, letting it air out. Castrating the tradition of pork barrelling over the falls of disaster by a transfusion of new, uncorrupted [yet] blood and single-term tenure in office.

You want to be king? Buy a ticket and take your chances. Want to be a senator or congressman and get rich fast? Buy as many tickets as you want. Sheriff? Mayor? State Governor? Same deal.

Think how refreshing it would be to have some waitress with things sticking out of her lips, nostrils, belly button for your president instead of some sleezeball never did anything in his life except improve his lying skills. A US Senator who only last week lived down in a trailer park trying to figure out how to keep his truck from being repossessed. A governor who just last week was a librarian, clerk in a toy store, selling lawn mowers, renting out excavating equipment, building houses, working some-way-or-other. Scrambling, trying to get by.

There’s a long tradition of picking juries by lottery. And jury-duty’s one hell of a lot more important than hanging around Washington D.C. lying, stealing, and thinking up new strait-jackets for the citizenry to wear.

It ain’t going to happen, of course. If it did I’d personally be careful not to buy a ticket. But I’d be tickled pea-green to see the snake shed its skin and grow a new one. Might actually buy a ticket and give it to some guy hanging out in the parking lot down at the convenience store.

The office holders mightn’t be better than the ones up there now, but they’d be fresh and it would spread the wealth around.

7 responses to “Dumping Representative Democracy”

What a great way to save money. No more campaigns, PACs, elections process, lost time from work, we could channel these funds to pay off the national debt and create new jobs for professionals to execute policy. Think of the legislative process no more block voting by rote.

Jules this is the Eureka to save America from the fate of the Roman Empire and cut off moneyed corruption!

swabby: They’re already in office, amigo. Those people in office are us. It’s just that they’ve had longer for their leprosy warts to grow. They’re what we’d be if we served two terms in the snake pit getting bribes, threats, constant ego-stroking and told we are smart. The only cure is single terms. Thanks for the visit. J

That sounds great, but maybe you should only be able to buy tickets for someone else. Or else you could only buy a certain amount of tickets. Anyways, the way you described, only ultra rich people could be elected. Picture Warren Buffet as president! LOL!

As a parallel, I’ve often said our government would be distinctly better if only prison inmates could be elected. We’ve already got a few like that, and they seem to be among the ones I could almost admire.

Welcome

I’m sharing it with you because there’s almost no likelihood you’ll believe it. This lunatic asylum I call my life has so many unexpected twists and turns I won’t even try to guess where it’s going. I’d suggest you try to find some laughs here. You won’t find wisdom. Good luck.